A Super Safe Car Seat Designed By Racecar Engineers

What happens when racecar engineers help create a car seat? Barry Mahal, EVP of car-seat design for Dorel Juvenile Group, recalls how the Maxi-Cosi Prezi came to be.

By
Barry Mahal, as told to Stephanie Schomer

"Our industry is full of similar products with the same goal: safety. So to truly innovate, we felt we needed to speak to people who think more broadly about danger. We partnered with one of the largest providers of seats for racecars, which protect drivers in 200-mile-per-hour crashes. They introduced us to a variety of foam compositions, and explained that proximity is key—no matter how good a material is, it's no benefit if it's too far from the driver's body. From there, we created a foam with hexagonal cells, which force the energy created in a crash to collapse in on itself, keeping it and the associated impacts away from the child. And the foam, from head to toe, is as close to the child as possible without reducing comfort." ($289, maxi-cosi.com/us)

A version of this article appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of Fast Company magazine.